Buddhist Psychology: An Inquiry into the Analysis and Theory of Mind in Pali Literature Book

The book is an attempt to envisage faithfully something true in the history of a very interesting current in human ideas. This something true is the analysis and theory of mind in the movement and culture we understand by early Buddhism, as well as in that of its direct descendant still thriving in Burma, Ceylon and Siam, called Theravada, or the Doctrine of the elders. This also is called a Buddhism-some call it Hina Yana, some Southern Bddhism.

While scholars are beginning to get at and decipher the long buried treasure of Buddhist writings brought from Mid-Asia, the general reader is being told that the group of other descendants from Early Buddhism called Maha Yanism, is not only evolved from the earlier doctrine, but is its completion and apotheosis.

The second object is to bring nearer the day when the historical treatment of psychology will find it impossible to pretend that the observation and analysis of mind began with the pre-Socratics. Psychologists are some them, curiously unhistorical, even with regard to the European field with its high fence of ignorance and prejudice.

With so large an object in so small a book, it has been impossible to compare the line of descent I have chosen with other lines, even with that of the Madhyamika school, in which Professor de la Vallee Poussin has revealed much interesting psychological matter. I have also to apologize for bringing in several terms in the original. This was as inevitable, for clearness and unambiguity, as would be that use of corresponding Greek words in writing on Greek psychology. But we are more used to Greek words. Finally, if I have repeated statements made in previous writings, it was to avoid irritating the reader by too many references, as if suggesting that he might as well be reading not one book, but three of four. (jacket)